• "We've had a little problem..."

The quavering voice on the telephone answering machine said, "We've had a little problem, and I'm at Willow Grove. I'm okay, I'll call you later."

Naval Air Station Willow Grove? In a Cessna 152?



But the story starts months earlier. After working together for almost a year, Kate pranced into my office, settled pertly in a chair by my desk and announced with a coy smile that it was a great day to go flying. A recent convert to aviation, thanks to a ride in my open cockpit biplane, I thought she was asking to go again. But she knew as well as I did--no, better than I did--that there was work to be done.


So when I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes in question, she said,

"What I'm trying to tell you is I'm just back from my fourth flight lesson, and it's a beautiful day for flying."

As an after-work flight instructor I was eager to hear about her flying experiences. Meanwhile, I pondered what stroke of fate had brought me together with this gorgeous woman who was smarted than I was, had better business instincts than I did, and liked to fly.

But that was days ago, and the phone message I'd just listened to had me perplexed and worried.

The 'we' suggested that an instructor had gone with her for some dual, instead of the scheduled solo session. That was easy to deduce because the spring weather was bizarre--snow so hard you couldn't see across the street with thunder followed by crackling clear blue sky and calm air followed by thunderstorm wind gusts followed by white-out snow, rinse and repeat. No competent instructor would send a student out alone in such conditions.

The 'problem' part, though, was hard to judge. "I'm okay" suggested she might not have been, and that was worrisome. And the fact that she was calling from a Naval Air Station suggested whatever the problem had been was significant enough that they'd had to land at an otherwise not open to the public facility. Strange.

Weather had to be the problem, I decided; and waited for the call that never came.

Instead, late in the day, she walked into my office, gingerly closed the door, and sat down as if something might break if she moved quickly. She blinked back tears, her lips quivered.

"Well, I've had an interesting afternoon," she said.

As the story unfolded I understood--although I'm not sure she did--that she'd very nearly died.

When she'd arrived at the rural Pennsylvania airport she was told her instructor wasn't there. The idea, far from a plan, had been a few minutes of dual--as is customary with a low time student--followed by solo practice takeoff and landings. Instead, the guy behind the desk threw her the keys to an aircraft and said,

"Why don't you go buzz your boyfriends house. The tanks are about half full, but that should be enough."

No discussion about weather, no admonition about low flying (quite the contrary), no words about doing a careful preflight, no reminder of the old adage that sky above you, runway behind you, and fuel in the gas truck are all worthless.

During the year we'd worked together we'd had occasion to travel on business in a lovely old G35 Beechcraft Bonanza. She showed an interest that went beyond simple pleasure in a sky-high perspective, so enroute I explained the instruments and controls to her and shared some of the things I'd learned in 25 years of flying up to that time. Fortunately, she remember a lot of what we'd talked about.


She prudently filled the Cessna with gas and took off, ready to enjoy a few minutes of freedom in three-dimensions over rolling Pennsylvania Dutch country before returning to practice some landings. At least that was her plan. With no training or advice, she had no reason to fear the deteriorating weather.

"About thirty to forty minutes into my flight," she wrote later to the FAA,"I began to encounter some clouds and snow at 3500 feet. I immediately headed back to Limerick. As the snow got worse I dropped down to 2500 feet to try to get below the snow. It was clear for a while, but the snow got worse again as I approached the airport. I was able to see the runway, though, so I entered the pattern on crosswind and announced my landing. About three quarters of the way down the downwind leg the snow got so bad that I was not able to see the runway. I immediately turned toward the runway hoping to see it, but I couldn't. I aborted the approach and attempted to get back in the pattern. I announced my intentions again on crosswind as visibility was a little better and I was able to see the runway. This time I was in and out of heavy snow on downwind. I was having trouble seeing the ground when I was to turn to base. At a momentary clearing I saw that I had drifted off course so I immediately turned to final at which time I completely lost all visibility."

This is the point where such stories often end.

But Kate, above all else, is a woman of determination. Well aware that the 500 foot high cooling towers at the Limerick nuclear power plant nearby, and remembering my admonition that the higher you are the safer you are, she decided to climb.


"It felt like the plane was neither climbing or moving," she wrote, "and I feared that the wind was holding me back. On later reflection I suspect that it was the lack of visual cues that caused the disorientation. I looked at my instruments and realized that I was, in fact, climbing so I tried to regain my composure. I announced to Limerick that I had aborted the landing and I did not know where I was."

While private pilots are given a modest amount of training on how to fly using only instruments, that's part of later stages of the curriculum. What she knew, she confided, was entirely what she'd learned in our few flights together. Her instructor had, so far, only taught her how to drive an airplane, not how to fly one. Worse, she hadn't been given even rudimentary training on the few instruments the aircraft had, or even how to change radio frequencies.

By happy chance, on one of those recent flights together, I'd explained how an artificial horizon and turn coordinator worked. Essentially I told her, 'Keep that little thing that looks like an airplane level and in the middle and the airplane will fly straight'. I don't remember exactly what I said about the turn coordinator, but it didn't matter. The one in her aircraft, required equipment, didn't work.

Vertigo, you probably have heard, is what gets you. Staying balanced is accomplished with help from your inner ear, your eyes, and how you body feels. The problem is, when you can't see, your inner ear lies to you and your body gets confused--vertigo takes over.

In everyday life, gravity pulls toward your feet, it pushes your butt into the seat if you're sitting down. But in an airplane you can create your own G(ravity) forces, and they ain't always down. In a loop, for example, it's perfectly easy to have your butt pushed into the seat just as hard when you're upside down as it is when you flying right-side up. So if you take away visual references you don't know which way's up—literally.

To complicate matters, there are other G-forces in an aircraft you don't experience in everyday, ground-bound life; and they can really confuse you. Well known to Navy flyers, for example, a catapult shot off a carrier at night can really confuse your senses. Transverse Gs, the forces you feel during horizontal acceleration, perversely, make you feel like you're climbing. So, surrounded by black ocean, it's easy to develop an uncomfortable sensation that you're climbing too steeply. But if you push a little on the stick when you're flying at 100 feet and accelerating through 200 knots, it only takes a split second before you hit the water.

By the same process, when Kate started to climb the aircraft decelerated, and she felt like she must be descending, so she tried to make the aircraft climb...and it only decelerated more. And this is where the unsuspecting, untrained, pilot often loses control.

The airplane slows to the point where the airflow over the wing is no longer able to generate enough lift. It stalls (aerodynamic stall--nothing to do with the engine, which is working fine and pulling as hard is it can). The aircraft noses over, usually falling off to one side a bit, and the pilot pulls harder sensing the sudden descent. Noting an increase in airspeed, because of the sound of the engine speeding and wind rushing, the ill-fated pilot pulls harder yet, tightening the turn and increasing the rate of descent.

Observers on the ground, under such circumstances, report seeing the aircraft come out of the clouds at a steep angle. They say they heard the engine was screaming (overspeed) or making "weird popping sounds," which is exactly the sound an aircraft engine makes when suddenly pulled to idle--a last dash effort when the pilot realizes, too late, what is happening.

So how do you avoid all this? You get proper training on how to fly using instruments, and how to resist the temptation to believe your lyin' eyes ears. Kate had been taught neither, but those few words about "keep the little airplane centered," and her determination to solve the problem, saved her.

Eventually she flew out of the snow squall. With the airport nowhere in sight, she knew she was lost. Then Murphy stepped in. If things weren't already bad enough, while Kate was trying without success to communicate her plight to the flight school, the push-to-talk button on the microphone broke off and flew across the cockpit.

Meanwhile, another aircraft, hearing her terse calls saying she was lost, came on the frequency and suggested she contact Philadelphia approach for radar vectors, direction to another airport. By using a fingernail, she was able to make the microphone work, and told the helpful pilot that sounded like a great idea, but no one had taught her how to tune the radio. He patiently explained which knobs to use, and what numbers to put in the radio, and mirabile dictu, she was able to switch frequencies, and hear aircraft talking to Philly Approach.

Announcing that she was a lost student pilot with less than two hours of solo experience, the approach controller calmly and reassuringly gave her directions to another airport to the east, Wings Field. That sounded like a good plan; her early flights had been at Wings Field before the school's recent move to Pottstown-Limerick Airport. But as she approached the area she could see snow squalls similar to the ones that she had just narrowly escaped.

She said, no, that didn't look like a good direction to fly and explained why. The controller, realizing that the weather was continuing to get worse, and that the pilot he was talking to was flying an aircraft with less and less fuel, redirected her to Willow Grove Naval Air Station, just a few miles away.


Approaching at right angles to the runway, at first she had problem seeing it in the distance. Then, almost overhead, she had trouble recognizing it as an airport because, as she said, "It had a really big-ass runway."

Directed by Approach to switch to Willow Grove tower, she was cleared to land but, "Watch out for the wires at 500 feet," the controller cautioned.

Oh gees, I'm at 600 feet, she thought. "What wires at 500 feet, I don't see any wires," she asked, leveling out.

"Land long, land long," another voice said.

With 8,000 feet of runway ahead of her--the longest and widest she'd ever seen--that would not be a problem, even with a little whoopdeedo in the middle of her approach. As she flared, the 2 inch steel emergency arresting gear cable flashed beneath her wheels. Held 10 inches off the runway by steel springs to ensure arresting hook engagement, it was just the right height to rip the landing gear off a little Cessna. But she missed the cable, made a "pretty good landing, under the circumstance," and taxied to the ramp.


Parked between huge Navy P-3 'Orion' sub-hunters, she was intimidated enough. When a Jeep screeched to halt, and Marines with rifles jumped out she almost lost it. When she heard a voice on a walki-talki ask if they needed help bringing her in, she cracked up.

"Do I really look like a security risk to you?"

Even the Marine couldn't stifle a grin, and she started to relax a little.

Walking to the Operations building nursing an overdose of adrenalin and blasted by the cold blustery wind, she started to shiver.

"Can we run?" she asked.

"No m'am, if you run I'll have to shoot you." Another grin.

They walked the rest of the way across the windy ramp. Quickly.

Inside the Operations building everyone came out to see who the lost lady was...and gave her a round of applause.

"You sounded very professional on the radio," the controller said.

"How did you know what to say when I told you I couldn't see the wires at 500 feet?" Kate asked.

"They blindfold us and put us behind the wheel of a Jeep out on the ramp. You learn very quickly how important clear, calm directions are.

"We were worried about you, though, 'cause the weather really sucks." the Navy Chief on duty said. "Oh sorry, m'am, that's Navy talk. But it is pretty shitty."

After writing a short, surprisingly coherent, statement on Navy stationary for the Ops Officer, and certifying in writing that she would hold the U.S. Government, The Department of the Navy, and Willow Grove Air Station "harmless from any damages sustained by me or the aircraft as a result of having landed," she called back to the flight school. After explaining what happened to an apparently unconcerned voice she was told just to fly on home, dear.

She explained that given her recent ordeal and poor weather she didn't really want to do that. She was told it was probably a good idea to get back on your horsie, honey. Besides, the weather had cleared up some.

As she protested, the Operations Officer took charge of the situation, asked for the phone and told whoever he was talking to that the aircraft was not leaving the ground unless it was flown by a licensed pilot. "Navy Regulations say so, and I say so. Any questions?"

Hugely inconvenienced by the whole thing, two instructors drove the hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Willow Grove and Kate flew back with one of them.

"Good thing, too" she said. "It was very bumpy, and even the instructor had trouble landing in the crosswind when we got back. He had to use full control deflection."

Is there a moral to this story? Well, a couple.

The first is if you're a pilot, especially a flight instructor, act on your instincts. If I had, Kate would never have been in such jeopardy. She told me once, for example, that she'd asked her instructor why they were doing a certain maneuver and his response was, "Because I told you so." I laughed that off as one of those you-had-to-be-there jokes. But when she later told me that they never used a check list, and he made her feel kinda foolish if she had to resort to one, I should have acted. Later, I found out they never used the shoulder harness (required), they never did a post flight debrief (required), they hadn't signed her off for solo before she went (required), etc. What other shortcuts did they take, say with required maintenance?

The second moral to this story is if you're a student pilot you unfortunately don't know what you don't know. So don't buy flight training because it's cheap or just because it's conveniently nearby, as Kate did with no other criteria to judge by. Make sure your instructor gives you a thorough preflight and postflight debrief, on the ground not in the airplane. Sure you'll pay for the time, but ground instruction (should be) cheaper than flight instruction. If you don't like your instructor, ask to fly with someone else. A good pilot isn't necessarily a good instructor (but never vice versa). In the military you have to 'hack it' regardless of who's in the cockpit with you. Not so when you're paying good money for training that your and other's lives will depend on.

I will always be grateful to whatever fate brought me together with this wonderful woman--indeed my days with her have defined my life. I'm even more grateful that she had the determination and luck to find a solution when she 'had a little problem'.

• WWI Flight Training Mystery Solved

Working on a blog about WWI flying I finally figured out the mystery about my grandfather Norman Dale's flying.

Lots of young men were available...far more than they could train because we couldn't built aircraft fast enough. So everyone went through ground school, which didn't require 'aerial equipment' aka aeroplanes. After mid-year in 1918 there were signs the war might actually end so an increasing number of people were shunted into the Observer program, including Norm. The two certificates we have documented his completion of ground school and observer training.

But then the armistice was signed on November 18th, 1918—just two months after his graduation, and a few weeks later he was discharged.

The pilot overage skewed the balance between pilots and observers such that, by mid-July 1918, the AEF was desperate for observers. As one member of the AEF Training Section advised the Division of Military Aeronautics Observation Section:

We desired 200 artillery observers with aerial gunnery, but stated that the full number called for was desired even if all had not such training. You will have to make every effort to send us fully trained men at the earliest possible date, as the facilities in the AEF will not permit of giving anything more than a refresher course. . . . If fully trained material is not available, make up the requested number by the best partially trained men available.

Now, as in wars to come, field commanders castigated stateside training staffs for sending poorly trained airmen, but they then went on to demand manpower at any cost. In this instance, the U.S.-based Training Section notified all ground school graduates that, because of the glut of people awaiting pilot training, no cadets would be accepted into the flying schools for several months, but men could volunteer as observers. Otherwise, they would be forced to transfer to other services, face immediate discharge from the Air Service, or wait until such time as they could be trained as pilots.

Already enrolled cadets not deemed qualified to be pilots but who were "otherwise desirable officer material" or those who were already qualified as pilots but who were "not at ease in the work" could become bombardiers or artillery observers?' The Air Service was, in other words, forcibly reconsidering its stance that only commissioned officers, not cadets, would be accepted as aerial observers. The dual system of Artillery and Signal Corps observer training had foundered on several levels, not the least of which was the relative trickle of men from the Field and Coast Artillery.

The Signal Corps therefore decided to recruit its own observers from nonpilot cadet volunteers who would receive special training at ground school and additional training with both the Artillery and Air Service. In August 1918, a new policy directed that aerial observers be commissioned in the Air Service rather than the Artillery, Infantry, or Cavalry. Those lacking artillery experience would be given instruction by the Artillery, and all aerial observers would receive training in aviation schools.


The urgent call for more trained observers continued into the fall. With some heat, Lt. Col. Herbert A. Dargue reminded the Director of Military Aeronautics that "the deficiency in observers in France is liable to cause an exceedingly embarrassing situation, unless every effort is to be put forth in the United States to expand observer schools to the absolute limit and train as many observers as possible." In an attempt to boost the morale of those trainees facing a seeming diminution of status and, no doubt, to impress on more men the worthiness of volunteering, the Chief of Training rallied all commanding officers of the flying schools to the view that "there is no question as to the importance of this work or the fact that it is of the same relative importance and dignity as that of the pilot."

By October, the Division of Military Aeronautics had increased authorizations at Langley and Post Fields and considered shortening the observers' course from seven to five weeks. Owing to the different backgrounds of the students - whether commissioned in the Air Service or Artillery, whether cadets or officers - the length of the observer course varied considerably over the relatively short period of its existence. Generally the course matched that offered by the Artillery schools, which were themselves different lengths.

In late 1917, the aerial observer course was six weeks long; it later became ten weeks, equal to the School of Fire for Field Artillery. Later, all three schools gave a seven-week course, and finally, to meet the stringent AEF demands for observers, the observer course was reduced to five weeks for commissioned personnel and ten weeks for cadets. Before going overseas, observers spent three additional weeks in the aerial gunnery course at Selfridge Field.

• NavAir Ops in Afghanistan

Received this from the head of the local FAA office. He's a former Naval Aviator of the Marine persuasion. His comment, "This is a combat diary from an F-18 pilot on the Eisenhower. Very interesting. Things have not changed all that much. No MIGs though . . . ."


Hello everyone, I just wanted to send out another update to everyone to let you know how things are going out here on the good ship Eisenhower. We' re in our seventh week of deployment and have 108 days to go.

We began combat operations on March 21st and have been flying over the beach almost everyday since then.



This is the most flying that I've done in all my 17 years.

Naval Aviators are limited by instruction to 30 flight hours a month and to go over that you must have a written waiver by the Flight Surgeon.

As of today I have 65 hours in the last 29 days.

Our missions are regularly 6 hours long. It's an hour transit to and from the ship just to get on station in southern Afghanistan. All the air traffic travels up a common air route that we call the boulevard that traverses Pakistan and crosses the border into Afghanistan.

All the traffic on the boulevard is either Naval aircraft from our ship or Air Force tankers coming from Qatar.

Most of our missions thus far have been in southern Afghanistan near the city of Kandahar. That is where a lot of the poppy harvest is taking place right now and that is where a lot of the enemy forces have dug in.

On a typical mission we check in with a JTAC (Joint Tactical Air Controller) on the ground who is part of a ground unit. The JTAC is trained to be able to communicate with aircraft and if necessary call in for air support in case some shooting starts. They used to be called Forward Air Controllers.


Thus far I have worked with American Special Forces, British Forces, Australian and Danish Forces.

It is very interesting to see the mix of troops on the ground. But its nice to see that all the procedures are very standardized no matter what nationality that you are supporting.

On most of our missions we provide Armed Reconnaissance, which has us watching over a friendly ground patrol, in vehicle or on foot, and looking ahead of their route of travel to try and find enemy fighters or potential spotting positions.

A few days ago I was watching over an Army Special Forces unit that were about 15 to 20 guys all riding four wheelers in the hills over looking a small village. We do most of our searching using our FLIR camera which is an infrared camera that has the ability to zoom in pretty close.




The JTACS on the ground can also link up with our FLIR camera and see what we are seeing on their laptop computer. We look for bad guys in groups digging or potentially placing road side bombs. A lot of times the JTACS give us coordinates of known bad guy locations and have us watch for movement or activity. A few nights ago I was talking to a JTAC and I could hear the gunfire over the radio and he calmly said they were taking fire from an unknown locations and wanted us to scan the hills surrounding them for any activity.

On average our Airwing drops four or five bombs a day or conducts a few strafing runs on enemy positions. We also do a lot of Shows of Force which is simply a high speed low altitude pass over an enemy position to get them to stop shooting or even run. Although I haven't yet gotten a chance to drop a bomb I can say that I'm not in a rush. My time will come. I did have a wing man that conducted a strafing run on two individuals who were digging at a roadside intersection. It was at night so the complexity of shooting bullets from an aircraft moving 500mph at a small moving target in the dark is absolutely amazing.

I enjoy working with the guys on the ground. I think its a comforting feeling for them to know that we are overhead and can deliver a devastatingly accurate blow within seconds of asking for it. Even if we don't find bad guys I feel a lot of job satisfaction just being up there and talking to the guys on the ground. These guys are pretty amazing. I will hear them say something like, "We are taking fire from an unknown location so we are going to get out of our vehicles and move into the open so that we can try to locate where the fire is coming from." Amazing bravery. Our team is killing a lot of bad guys right now.

Some of the most harrowing parts of our mission is refueling, particularly in the dark or in bad weather. On a typical 6 hour mission we refuel off of big wing Air Force tankers three times.



There is a point on the boulevard that once I cross it I know that if I have a problem with my tanker,I do not have enough fuel to get back to the carrier and have to divert to one of the three occupied airfields in the country. The tankers all hold at specific points and altitudes around the country. I know before I launch what my tanker's call sign is, what point he will be at, what time I'm supposed to be there, what altitude he will be at and what frequency I will talk to him on.

There is an overarching control agency that runs the tanker plan and it is constantly changing usually based on the fight that is going on the ground. A lot of times tankers get pushed over an area where there is fighting so that the airborne assets don't waste time trying to get to their tanker and back to the fight. Once one tanker moves it starts a domino effect that effects almost everyone. Its like a shell game. They are constantly shuffling tankers around. I don't think I've launched on a single mission and hit all my tankers that I was originally scheduled for. I have tanked off American and British Air Force tankers. Two days ago I was on a tanker and two French Rafael fighters were waiting in line with me at 22000 feet for their gas.

When the mission is over we hit the tanker one last time before exiting the country and fly the boulevard south and the hour flight back to the carrier. When its all done then I get to look forward to that night carrier landing.

Luckily the North Arabian Seas calm and the weather has been good. No pitching deck out here so far. By the end of the mission I'm usually starving. I try and take food and water with me in the cockpit and typically I get a chance to eat and drink something on the trip back to the carrier at the end of the mission. But you don't want to drink too much because that presents a whole new problem for a single seat cockpit. Thank goodness for altitude hold.

The cockpit gets pretty crowded with all of our extra gear. We have our standard issue gear for going in country which includes our pistol and two magazine clips, our blood chit which is basically a piece a paper that we use in case we find ourselves on the ground that is written in several different native languages and basically says "I'm an American and you will be paid if you help me return to friendly American forces."

We carry a camel back full of water that is sewn into our flight vest. On every mission we go on, we have a stack of papers that have coordinates and radio frequencies. I also have my new helmet mounted targeting system which is a new visor that clips to the regular helmet and projects vital information on my visor (I've attached a picture of me wearing that helmet in the cockpit.)

It looks like a Martian helmet, but it is honestly the best piece of gear that I carry with me. I can type in the coordinate for a friendly unit on the ground and then look outside the cockpit and a diamond will be projected on my visor directly over the position of that unit on the ground. It's very useful in locating things on the ground, but it also helps me find things in the air. Yesterday I saw my tanker from 28 miles away because my helmet puts a box around the radar contact that I have locked up, so I know exactly where to look. Pretty cool.

I also take a pair of NVGs on every flight. Night Vision goggles are absolutely necessary once the sun goes down. The ground units use a lot of infrared lights to help mark their positions or the positions of enemy units and I can see all of that from 20000 feet with my NVG's on.


Well I've written way more than I should have. I hope I haven't bored you. I know many of you have asked what I'm doing over here. This e-mail was to try to help you understand what I've been doing. It in no way is meant to be tooting my own horn. The guys on the ground are the real heroes. I'm simply a supporting element to the fight.

I want to say thank you to all of you that have sent care packages. They were very much appreciated by me and all my ready room. Keep watching the news. If you hear about airstrikes in Southern Afghanistan there is a good chance it came from my air wing.

• Harbor of the Sun

Reading a photography/guide book about San Diego I stumbled on a reference to Joe Boquel who tried, on November 5th, 1915 , to do a "corkscrew" by the Cabrillo Bridge, the entrance to Balboa Park. He crashed and died five minutes before he was supposed to be awarded the Panama-California Exposition Gold Medal. He was not the first, or the last aviator to die in San Diego, a city that once billed itself as 'The Air Capital of The West.' This photograph was taken just before the fateful flight.



Excerpt from Harbor of the Sun—The Story of the Port of San Diego
By Max Miller, Country Life Press, 1940

Someday, perhaps a century from now, North Island and what it represents to our baffling span on earth will be explained. Our period through the childhood of aviation will be dissected by professors. And mankind will know then whether we were another Children's Crusade speeding the way to our own finish, or whether our period was another Renaissance, or whether we were merely out for a good time learning better ways of bombing one another.

North Island, occupying the center stage of the harbor, is a body of land completely surrounded by planes and submerged under planes.


A condensed history of flying was enacted there, is still being enacted there, and the patron saint of North Island is Glenn Curtiss.

He arrived in San Diego in 1910 with an exhibition team. What little flying was being done elsewhere in those days was being done in the morning, the afternoons being considered too windy. But to his surprise he found the San Diego afternoons rather calm and the mornings ideal for his work.


Instead of hauling his exhibition team out of town that night, he made a formal request to be granted the use of North Island for three years and the privilege of erecting the necessary plant for conducting a school.

Since that day North Island has not seen a moment without planes, be they the old pusher type, the tractor type, civilian, army or navy until today all the planes of the aircraft squadrons of the battle fleet are serviced there and housed there.

Because of North Island the current generation of San Diego (this is, those born within the past thirty years) has been deprived of that thrill which comes with seeing one's first flying machine land in town.

But the current generation has not been deprived of watching adults sneaking up on sea gulls, then frightening them at close range, the better to study the mechanics of wing structure and quick take-off. North Island has not had its day: North Island is still having its day. But North Island is no longer the home of fanatical individualists like that wild-eyed Swede, Ivar T. Mayerhoffer, with his home-made contraption, "The Flying Whale"; nor the home of the world's first loopist and the world's first upside-down flier, Lincoln Beachey.


North Island no longer has those day-long arguments over which method of instruction is the better, the "Wright Method' with its dual control, instructor and pupil riding side by side until the student could pilot the ship himself maybe or the "Curtiss Method," in which the student alone in the plane hopped and hopped and hopped until he could hop without crashing maybe.


For that was North Island.

That was the North Island of 1910 and of 1911 and of 1912. That was still the North Island when Glenn Curtiss made from there (in 1911) the world's first seaplane flight.


And when Major T. C. Macauley from North Island made the world's first night flight. Both the army and the navy already were represented among the students. But it was up to Curtiss to interest the navy even more. This he did with the seaplane. For until he actually took a plane off the water, the admirals in Washington remained convinced that aviation was an army game.

Today, of course, all of North Island, once held by the army for flying, is now held by the navy exclusively. The army is out. And such is life.

But if Curtiss, flying off North Island, showed the navy that planes could be taken off the water, Eugene Ely in the same month went one better by showing the navy that a plane could be landed on a deck. He landed on the deck of the cruiser Pennsylvania. Lines and sandbags were used as arresting gear on a wooden platform over the quarter- deck and after-turret. This was the beginning, during the January of 1911, of the modern aircraft-carrier equipment.



During the early flying days on North Island the saying was prevalent that no flier ever lasted more than three years. There seemed reason for this remark, for the year 1913 was an especially ugly one for accidents.

Lieutenant L. E. Goodier, the first army man to have made a flight on North Island, also was the first army man to crash there. He was badly injured while attempting to turn too close to the water in a flying boat.

Two months later during the same year of 1913 Lieutenant Rex Chandler, Coast Artillery Corps, was killed after falling into the bay. The next month Lieutenant J. D. Park was killed. And then Lieutenant E. L. Ellington, cavalry, was killed. And then Lieutenant H. M. Kelly, infantry.

Considering the few planes in use, these army deaths on North Island during one year seemed such a frightful price to pay that a study of the accidents was made a study which resulted in the belief that some of the fatal accidents would have been merely forced landings had the engines not been in the rear of the pilots. In the case of a bad landing, the engine was knocked loose from its supports and fell upon the occupants of the machine.

This hoodoo year of '13 was the year when Sergeant William C. Ocher coined the phrase that has stuck to North Island all these years. He said he would rather be "the oldest pilot in the army than the boldest." Apparently he lived up to it, for, twenty years later, while still on duty, he was awarded a thousand dollars by the government for safety inventions used in blind flying.

In the same manner that the phrase is an heirloom on North Island, so too is the copy of the first army flying rules posted over there. The rules included:

• Do not take up aviation if you expect to be married soon or are in love.
• Horses will be tied to the picket line provided for private mounts and not to trees, fences, water pipes or buildings.
• Dogs without collars and muzzles will be shot.
• Do not enter this branch of the army lured by hopes of increased pay. Expenses are high and there is no use trying to conceal the fact.
• If you are the sort of person who likes to keep his hands clean, don't take up aviation.
• If you are a bluffer, don't take up aviation. You cannot expect to bluff the atmosphere, etc., etc.

The reason for the fourth item was illustrated by the case of Captain B. D. Foulois (later a major general and head of the Air Corps). When funds on the island were low, he fished from his own pocket $150 to maintain the upkeep of his army plane.

Another sad case was that of "The Old Forty-niners," so named because there were forty-nine of them. They comprised a North Island detachment sent to Honolulu to establish an army aviation school there. In Honolulu their hardships were increased because for two years this detail had no planes, and the infantry in Hawaii would not let the fliers forget the fact. They were called the "Walking Aviators."

The saying goes that North Island though today so complicated, so machinelike, so guarded, so serious, so tremendous has furnished more news stories to the world per square foot of land that any other island. It is just a saying. And yet, like all sayings, there is something in back of it, certainly.

Civilians, in glancing across the bay at North Island today, see a baffling land of hangars, shops, factories, run- ways, landing fields. All is complicated, all is secret, and all is beyond a lone man's comprehension.


Records perhaps are being broken, but we know nothing about them, and are not supposed to know anything about them. Individual fliers have been swallowed into what it takes to make The Whole. Even they, the best of them, are but part of some- thing else. Even they today are machines, and over them today giving orders are other machines. North Island is still North Island, but the personalities on it have been transfixed into A Personality. Cameras are not wanted, or crowds, or headlines or volunteer aid from the little boys around town.

But how different it all was on North Island when, on March 28, 1913, Lieutenant T. D. Milling, flying a Burgess tractor type, created a new world's record for two- seater by remaining aloft four hours and twenty-two minutes.


How different when, on Christmas of that same year, Lieutenant J. E. Carberry and Lieutenant W. R. Taliaferro established a new American altitude climb for pilot and passenger. They climbed to seven thousand feet.

How different when, in 1911, Galbraith Rogers arrived from New York in a Wright Model D, the first trans- continental flight. Forty-nine days.


Or when, in 1912, Lieutenant (later Rear Admiral) John Towers established above North Island a new world's endurance record for seaplanes. He was aloft six hours and ten minutes. He was, incidentally, one of the first students on North Island, arriving for the class of 1910-11. In one of his early flights he was thrown from his plane when it hit a "bump." The plane at the time was at two thousand feet, but he caught hold of the landing- gear framework. Although his legs were swinging in mid- air he pulled himself up and climbed back into the pilot's seat.


And, too, the excitement on North Island when R. E. Scott, formerly an army officer, showed a device with which he said he could drop bombs with "an approach to mechanical precision." He was asked to prove it. He did, for the world's first time, on that April morning of 1914. He made four hits out of five from an altitude of eight hundred feet.

His pilot over North Island was Lieutenant T. F. Dodd, who, with Sergeant Marcus, already had been headlined for having just completed a cross-country record by flying 246 miles in four hours and thirty-three minutes.

And that same year from North Island, Lieutenant H. L. Muller, flying a Curtiss tractor, established the altitude record for "all future time" by reaching 17,441 feet. But what does remain permanent about the record today was his finding that the air above San Diego after he had reached ten thousand feet was warmer than on the ground. This feature of San Diego's air still holds true, naturally, the peculiarity being due, it is said, to the heat waves circulating from the desert back to the ocean.

The civilian students on North Island included the first Chinaman to learn to fly. He was Tom Green, who later became a captain in his home country. And there was Miss Tiny Broadwick, the first person to show San Diego a parachute jump. She flew over the San Diego exhibition and, after jumping, landed far beyond sight of the exhibition grounds. Next day she did it again but better.


Yet long before this, among the earliest, was the Swede, Ivar T. MayerhofFer, and his creation, "The Flying Whale."

Perhaps every town at some early time has had a Mayerhoffer. Perhaps he is no exception. For a Mayerhoffer creates no records, he originates no lasting stunts to be duplicated by a school of fliers. Yet each time a Mayerhoffer takes off he produces a miracle; each time he lands he produces another one.

San Diego's Mayerhoffer operated his ailerons by a contraption fitting over his shoulders like a yoke. "I can't get used to it," he would say. He would say this ahead of time even to prospective customers. He did not have many, but he had the whole town for his gallery. He charged his passengers "five dollars a throw" the phrase at the time being more accurate than slangy.

His craft was the first commercial seaplane to be operated on the Pacific Coast. For his power he used the remnants of a Roberts two-cycle, six-cylinder motor. The hull, made out of boards, had so much suction that even the harbor was hardly large enough for a take-off. But once he managed somehow to get off he would fly over North Island against strict regulations. The year was 1914-15.

"Swede's going to fly today! Swede's going to fly to- day!" The information had a way of spreading, and the ambulance would come down to the waterfront.

To curb him, a patrol boat was stationed at the narrow entrance of the first of his runways between two piers. This bottled him up for a while, but not for long. He changed his runway. These piers have since been torn down, but in the days of Swede Mayerhoffer the rickety piers were always crowded with spectators. For he was always around there, either repairing his craft from a crash or taking off for another one.

Merely to land on the water shook the seaplane up enough, but he had a bigger ambition. He began landing his seaplane on land. He built a landing runway of greased boards, and he would try to shoot the ship up these.

In one of his crashes a woman passenger was drowned. In another crash he plunged from four hundred feet, striking the bay. The plunge seemed to have been straight down, but it could not have been, for he lived, and he managed to keep his motor afloat.

The Swede told Joe Boquel, whose name at the time was surpassing Lincoln Beachey's, that Joe was a fool not to get more money for his stunts, as he was certain to be killed.

Joe answered: "Who in hell are you to tell me I'll be killed? You're due next, you know."

The Swede, however, was right. Joe Boquel did go first. He was killed a few weeks later while stunting for the San Diego exhibition. Mayerhoifer lasted another year, eventually being killed near Los Angeles, struck by his own propeller.

For San Diego, though, the name of Lincoln Beachey will never die not after that Sunday afternoon when off Point Loma he made the world's first upside-down flight, the world's first loop, then returned and did them again. The people of San Diego, crowded on every hill that Sunday afternoon, cannot forget.


Or perhaps the age of mellowness at last is descending. For, surely, it can descend on a city the same as on a person. So many of us around here already are thinking fondly of aviation's past instead of concentrating on its present or its future. But that is the way it will have to be.

What formerly would make a front-page story, and get us all running over to North Island, today would not be mentioned, or enjoyed, or watched, or argued about or noticed. Nothing short of a hundred planes colliding all at once could compete today with San Diego's aviation stories of yesterday. A squadron of planes leaving San Diego this week for Honolulu receives less than three paragraphs, third page. Besides, the squadrons from San Diego are now making such flights all the time. And to Panama nonstop, also. The novelty is over.



Yet some of these old names in aviation on North Island deserve a trace of permanence, for the editions carrying some of their obituaries have long ago been used for wrapping fish, we shall say- Yet all these old-timers are not dead. Far from it. Some are still flying. Even they perhaps secretly cherish those old memories of North Island like some veteran trouper remembering the night so long ago when his juggling act was billed second instead of being the opener in the Palace,

All this accounts in part for the subsequent tossing of so many names at random into this bushel basket. For what these early men did on North Island for aviation at the risk of their shoulder blades in those rickety craft has not been exactly forgotten, although laurels since then have had a peculiar habit of drenching some fliers too much for their own good while forgetting others completely.

Lieutenant W. R. Taliaferro, during the August of 1915, established from North Island a new American endurance record of nine hours and forty-eight minutes. His fuel exhausted, he landed with a dead stick. Next month he was killed by a fall into the bay.

Next year, 1916, Captain C. C. Culver, in a plane near Los Angeles, sent radiotelegraph signals which were received on North Island. A month later he sent radio messages from his plane to a plane piloted by Lieutenant W. A. Robertson. These were the first instances on record in which radio was demonstrated as an absolute success in sending and receiving messages in the air.

The death of Lieutenant H. B. Post, who was killed while attempting an altitude record from North Island, February 9, 1914, is responsible for the pusher-type plane definitely being condemned by the army. He lost control of his plane. And the motor, being in back of him, fell on him.

This was one death too many of this sort for the army. But the condemnation of the pusher types left the school on North Island with only two planes.

But it is doubtful if any North Island class quite equaled that of 1915-17 in students who later became celebrities or who already were civilian celebrities before starting to fly.

This class included Major J. P. Mitchel, the one-time mayor of New York, after whom Mitchel Field, on Long Island, is named; Captain Roscoe Fawcett, of the Fawcett Publications; Norman Ross, then the world's swimming champion; Major W. R. Ream, one of the first flight surgeons of the army, who now has a landing field named after him close to San Diego;



Colonel T. C. Turner, who later became chief of the Marine Air Service; and there was Captain Henry H. Arnold, later Major General and chief of the Army Air Corps.

The list of that class could go on and on, but others among the class will be mentioned later, especially those who stayed with flying.

But the next world event occurred in 1918-19 when Major A. D. Smith attempted a transcontinental flight to New York and return with five planes. These five planes, a record number at that time for such an attempt, flew from North Island to New York by way of Texas, Louis-iana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the two Carolinas. The fliers remained in New York a week and were the talk of the country.


Their return trip to San Diego went well until they reached El Paso, Texas. Here the planes, after landing, were struck by a violent wind. All except one were over-turned and damaged beyond repair. However, this was the first time in history that a formation of planes had flown from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Another job handed North Island in 1919 was the formation of an aerial forest patrol. As radio communication still required too expensive an equipment and was not dependable, carrier pigeons were carried in each plane and released whenever a fire was sighted. This accounts for the pigeon lofts which remained for so long on North Island.

Lieutenant James H. Doolittle on September 4, 1922 flew from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Diego in twenty-one hours a record which stood for eight years.


The world's first refueling in midair was successfully attempted above North Island in 1923. The pilots in the plane were Lieutenant Lowell H. Smith and Lieutenant J. P. Richter, who thereby broke records for the combination of speed, duration and distance.


But this is getting ahead a little, for in 1917 the navy was granted authority to move in on North Island and occupy two old buildings and the Curtiss school hangar for seaplanes. This, of course, was the beginning of the present Naval Air Station and the beginning of the end of the army there. For the army on North Island is no more.

This was a hard gulp for the army, and it has never quite overcome the irony of the thing. But as a final fling, and to celebrate the Armistice, the army put into the air from North Island in 1918 the largest number of planes aloft at any time at one place in the United States. The planes numbered 212. They did not fly in the tight formations of today, but rather spread all over the sky, which made their number seem four times larger than that used in such flights today. This first big flight which brought newspaper correspondents to San Diego from all pointswas under command of Lieutenant Colonel H. B. S. Burwell

To attempt the first nonstop transcontinental flight, Lieutenant Oakley Kelly and Lieutenant John A. Macready had on North Island, in 1922, a thick-wing monoplane with a wingspread of ninety-six feet. But the gigantic ship (certainly gigantic for then) was powered by a single Liberty motor. The ship had never taken off with a full capacity, so the moment of take-off was something to see, and all of San Diego came out to see it.


After covering a half-mile of North Island before it could lift itself, the ship then was headed straight for the bluffs of Point Loma. The pilots were forced to bank at an altitude of a hundred feet. They circled North Island twice, then aimed for the mountains only to find the pass blocked by a fog.

The fliers then decided to circle back over North Island and try to break the endurance record. When they were again above the field they dropped a message to the com- manding officer requesting that he make necessary arrange- ments to authenticate the world's record if they should succeed. From then on they circled North Island for thirty-six hours and eighteen minutes, with the whole country following the news about them. But all for nothing.

For, despite the fact that the plane was watched by thousands during the thirty-six hours of circling, the record was not authenticated and was never allowed because of lack of official witnesses.

Although the fliers were disappointed about this, they started out on another nonstop transcontinental attempt as soon as the ship was reconditioned on North Island. A cracked water jacket forced them down at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, but they had broken the world's record for distance flight. They had covered 2,284 and again were the talk of America and Europe.

The next event was the round-the-world flight which started and ended on North Island in i924. This flight, as we may recall, occupied 176 days. Lieutenant Lowell Smith was in command after the planes reached Alaska.


But in this haste to speak about records broken on North Island, or from North Island, the story has moved too rapidly into near-modern times. Sweeter is the feeling to return once again to those hedge-hopping days on the island when aerial charts were nothing more than railway maps obtained from the local railway station, when the few plane compasses were more misleading than useful, when beacons as yet were not so much as a futuristic dream, when emergency landing fields were unknown. But even then, almost from the start, these pilots on North Island were attempting to push their crates into the back country. To get carried by wind drift into the deserts of Mexico was easy, brutally easy, during an overcast sky. Some of the pilots, when lost, had no other alternative but to die after forced landings, and two others when lost from North Island were murdered by Tiburon Indians.

Lieutenant W. A. Robertson, with Colonel H. G. Bishop as passenger, started from North Island for Calexico. Without knowing it, they were going in the wrong direction. They flew to the limit of the gas supply, then made a dead-stick landing on what they thought was the shore of Salton Sea.


After walking south they turned around and retraced their steps. They noticed for the first time the presence of a tide, and that while walking south the water completely obliterated their tracks. They realized then that they had landed, not at Salton Sea, the California desert lake, but on the Gulf of California, Mexico.

They emptied a one-gallon can of oil and filled it with water from the radiator. With this as their drinking water they headed north with two sandwiches and two oranges. The nearest point to the United States boundary was sixty miles to the northeast, although they had no way of know- ing this then.

The country over which they tramped was entirely devoid of water and consisted of shifting sand dunes. They gradually discarded their helmets, goggles and aviation coats. The nights were cold, and during the day the men caught the full blast of the Mexican sun.

After eight days of this, Lieutenant Robertson stumbled into the camp of one of the automobile searching parties at a surveyor's tank on the border. He was out on his feet. He was placed inside the car and directed the driver back across the desert to find Colonel Bishop. The automobile became stuck in the sand dunes, and the party continued the rest of the way on foot, following Lieutenant Robertson's tracks.

Colonel Bishop was found thirty miles from the border but was too far gone to walk. An ambulance from Yuma managed to get within fifteen miles of him, and the rescuers carried him the distance.


Yes, those were the hedge-hopping days. Those are the days the men of San Diego remember when they look today across the bay at North Island. They remember because they took part in the searches.

In another case about the same time, four other North Island fliers were lost in Mexico but were saved from starvation by a herd of steers. These fliers were Lieutenant William R. Sweeley, with Corporal J. C. Railing as passenger; and Lieutenant Daniel F. Duke, with Lieutenant McCarn as passenger.

They had taken off from North Island for Prescott, Arizona. Confused by the weather and having no compass, they headed into Mexico by mistake. Lieutenant Sweeley ran out of gas and made a forced landing. Lieutenant Duke continued southward for some time and, seeing an adobe house, circled it and landed there. The house was empty, so he returned to where the first plane had landed.

He picked out the worst part of the valley and landed in a marsh. His plane turned over on its nose, breaking the propeller and one wing. The gasoline was transferred from the wrecked plane to the good plane, and a take-off was attempted. While trying to taxi to a smooth part of the field, Lieutenant Sweeley bounced into a large hole cov- ered with grass. The plane turned over onto its back, and that was the end of that.

The party of four was marooned without food and with no idea of the location, except that it must be somewhere in Mexico. The men limped from the wreck to see what they could find. In the distance they sighted a herd of cattle.

The fliers tried to separate a calf from the herd, but this stampeded the whole herd out of the valley and left the lost party as hungry as before. After dark Lieutenant McCarn and Corporal Railing succeeded in driving a steer into a blind canyon. There they cut its throat with a bearing scraper and returned to the wrecked plane with a quarter of beef.

The beef was boiled in a receptacle made from the aluminum cowling of the plane. They lived on this beef forever, it seemed, and then one day sighted a couple of Mexicans and were guided to the Circle-Bar Ranch. The owner of the ranch was an American. He got them out.

The two North Island fliers murdered by Mexican Indians were Lieutenant Cecil B. Connelly and Lieutenant Frederick Waterhouse. They were flying border patrol, from North Island in August 1919 and in bad weather confused the Gulf of California for the coast of California. They thought the west shore of the Gulf was the coast line adjoining San Diego. They followed the west shore of the Gulf southward deeper into Mexico, thinking they were following the San Diego coast northward.

Out of gas, they finally landed on the shore of the Gulf. Part of their story they themselves carved with a jackknife on the fuselage of their plane;

Flew four hours, five minutes. Turned to our right and flew up coast for two hours and 35 minutes. Didn't see a sign of civilization all the way. Saw boat here. Circled it and landed but it didn't see us. We have no food. Are drinking water from radiator. Tried to catch fish, but after two days gave it up. We have been here five days and are pretty weak. We will mark for days here on left of this sign. We started walking up coast for a day and a half. Ran out of water and turned back. . . .

With marks they indicated the days, all told, as seventeen.

What really happened, according to facts found later, was that the men in the boat did see the plane. They were Indians off Tiburon Island, the last hold-out of the once- famous tribe of Sens. The Indians sighted the fliers, all right, and after a while came ashore and joined them. One of the fliers was in bad shape and unable to walk. They had been living on clams and crabs.

The Indian fishermen (not in a boat exactly, but a blue canoe) carried the fliers south in the canoe to the Bahia de los Angeles and landed them there, later returning and killing them. The Indians robbed the bodies of money, took what clothing they wanted, then left.

The actual fate of the missing lieutenants was not known on North Island until October 1919. The word came after a seaman had reported to the American consul at Nogales that the bodies of two men had been found partly buried at the Bahia de los Angeles. The destroyer Aaron Ward was sent immediately south from San Diego, found the bodies, and returned with them to San Diego. The rest of the story was pieced together bit by bit aferwards, as such things are, by more and more evidence and by a confession from one of the Indians.

Today, after thirty years, one cannot help wondering how many lives North Island has given to aviation. The list, even if it could be checked in full, would be too de- pressing to record certainly too depressing to record on a monument. Nor do fliers, as we know, care to look at their business that way, especially those who experimented with North Island's first rickety crates. Other industries rail- roading, mining, chemistry have taken their first big tolls, too. Mining, especially, is still taking its toll.

Yet all this is a rough story of the island which is not technically an island, but which dominates San Diego's harbor and remains the central ring of the aerial circus continually under way.

San Diego has other flying fields, of course, including the huge Lindbergh Field adjoining the bay and built from harbor dredgings.

Naturally we recall the time when he was having his "Spirit of St Louis" built here inside a former tuna cannery reconverted into a plane factory. And naturally we remember how naive he seemed and that he actually wanted letters of introduction to carry to Paris, and that he wanted to know ahead of time the cheapest way of reaching Paris from the landing field outside the city and if an interurban was running to Paris from the field, and that he wanted to know if, by selling his plane over there, he would have enough money to see a little of Europe and pay his fare back home, too. He was afraid the plane would not sell for much over there because of the depreciation of the flying-hours. Yes, we remember all these conversations because we were around the plane factory and took part in them.

But it so happens that some of us do not share in this national habit of picking out one symbolical hero at the cost of the memory of all other nervy men in the same business, men who not only are forgotten now but a good many of whom are dead from their own experiments. Be- cause of North Island's thirty years, San Diego has seen too many great and courageous and hard-working fliers for the city to be sold completely on one personality as the outstanding deity of them all. And so all of North Island remains San Diego's symbolical personality for aviation. And it will have to be like that. For too many seasons now, too many springs, summers and winters, has the city watched the experimenting planes go up and come down- sometimes altogether too fast. The island's crash siren sounds. The ambulance and fire truck speed from the garage, and the families of the officers' quarters over there are meanwhile left wondering: "Who?"

And maybe someday, centuries from now, historians on this same harbor, in looking back, will change the question from "Who?" to "Why?"